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Arthritis cure using capsaicin and hot water is painful.

I published A cheap easy cure for arthritis – maybe, two years ago on July 12, 2010. That single treatment eliminated the pain for two years. Two years ago, two months after the treatment I wrote My arthritis cure seems to work – update. Now, August 2012, there appeared to be some recurrence of pain in the front of the left part of my right ankle; it isn’t as bad as before the treatment two years ago, but why wait when I think the treatment used above will cure my problem for two more years.

With the hope of getting an even better cure, I decided to intensify the treatment by putting more capsaicin on my ankle for a few more days. That would get more of that hot-feeling chemical deeper into the joint. For four days I applied topical capsaicin out of the foam-tipped bottle to the ankle three times per day, until it was shiny with liquid, but did not run off. That took about 10 seconds, then I blew air onto the wet ankle to evaporate the alcohol diluting agent more quickly. On the day of the hot bath I didn’t apply any more capsaicin. I pre-heated the bath tub to 103° F and let it stabilize for a few minutes and then got in while holding the ankle outside of the tub with my leg draped over the edge of the tub. I knew that capsaicin-laden skin was painful when subjected to heat. The goal was to raise my body temperature to about 102° F so the ankle would be heated from the inside out by my own body temperature. For more on this hot bath treatment see, Proba – 1995, Cure The Common Cold Using Voluntary 102° F Fevers. After being in the tub for a couple of minutes, to let my skin warm up, I raise the tub temperature to 106° F. This procedure requires a medical-type mouth thermometer to get the temperatures right.

I lay there in the hot water for about half an hour (I didn’t time this event because I was only in interested in my body temperature). The idea was that when my whole body temperature had attained102° F for a few minutes I would lower my ankle into the tub and raise its temperature to 105° F. Because it was already warmed to the higher body temperature it wouldn’t take very long to raise the inner temperature to the pain point. BIG mistake. The instant the capsaicin-laden ankle touched the hot water its pain level shot up to a PAINS~11. Of course I instantly pulled it up, and yelled to Debbie to get a wash cloth drenched in cold water and wrap my ankle. That quickly eased the pain. I lowered the bath temperature to 102 and tried again, but once again instant pain. The goal was to raise the inside pain, not the skin pain, but clearly this wasn’t working. I drained the bath tub to only 2 inches deep and started adjusting that smaller quantity of water to different temperatures. The temperature had to be 80° F before it was comfortable. So, the high temperature is clearly not the way to do this capsaicin treatment. Perhaps, just raising my body temperature would have sufficed, because the inside temperature of my ankle was clearly higher than 80° F even when outside of the bathtub.

After I got out of the tub and started writing this post the skin of my ankle started burning and felt like a PAINS~8, which made it difficult to type, or think about much beside the burning pain. Fortunately I had a pot big enough to fill with cold tap water and when I immersed my foot into it and lowered the temperature, there was no pain at all. It was three hours before I could take my foot out of the water without it becoming painful again. Six hours later I was able to go to bed without any pain even without a cooling wet wrap.

Self-experimentation is risky, but it is the quickest way to observe the potential results of an idea.